"In the cellars of the night, when the mind starts moving around old trunks of bad times, the pain of this and the shame of that, the memory of a small boldness is a hand to hold."

"Aspiring to a souffle, he achieves a pancake at which the reader saws without much appetite."

"Isn't it amazing the way the future succeeds in creating an appropriate past?"

"Books fall from Garry Wills like leaves from a maple tree in a sort of permanent October."

"The rich are different from you and me because they have more credit."

"It takes a long time to grow an old friend."